Organizers laud the music star “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

They lauded the 75-year-old music star “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” With songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” Dylan created anthems for the anti-war and civil rights movements.

The literature honor is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, the others being prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine and the Nobel Peace Prize. The news came as somewhat of a surprise as it typically has gone to authors known for novels, short stories or poetry.

Since 1901, the prize has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, according to Nobel’s will, written “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” It is presented by the Swedish Academy and comes with a financial award of around $900,000.

Past laureates include U.S. writers Toni Morrison and Saul Bellow, Britain’s Harold Pinter and William Golding, Ireland’s Samuel Beckett, Canada’s Alice Munro, South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chile’s Pablo Neruda, France’s Jean-Paul Sartre, Germany’s Gunter Grass, Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk and China’s Mo Yan. Last year, Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus won the award. Dylan is the first American to get the honor since Morrison won it in 1993.